My family has always been one for random traditions during the holidays. One of these traditions is a massive secret santa between all of the cousins. It sounds normal but there is a list of rules that affects everyone involved.
These are the rules:
1. Only the older cousins can do it due to the age gap in our family. If you are considered a “younger cousin” you have to wait until you are in high school to be able to be added to the pull.
2. Once you are a part of the pull you do not receive any gifts from the other aunt and uncles
3. The gift limit is $100 (this rule was set whenever the older cousin’s parents were paying for everything)
4. The only way to get out of the pull is to either be married or have kids.
5. Instead of filling out a regular secret santa survey sheet you just put whatever you want in the group text
Pretty weird rules but everyone understood and listened to them until this year. So, as I mentioned before there is a pretty big age gap between the cousins. There are the older cousins (mid to late 20s) and the younger cousins (teenagers and the great grand kids). Well this past summer one of these older cousins, Sara, got married which means that she graduates these secret santa rules and moves onto the parents’ new white elephant tradition we started last year.
Sara was one of the core seven cousins who started the secret santa tradition and now that she gets to leave, all of the older cousins want to leave and join the white elephant. This started a month long texting war in the cousin group chat with the older cousins fighting with the younger cousins.
At the end of the texting war, the older cousins convinced the adults to throw the rule book away and let all of them to join the white elephant. This means that the pull for secret santa went from 11 down to 4.
I don’t know about you but personally I don’t see a point of having a secret santa at this point. Especially whenever there is a 25% chance of knowing who has you, 50% chance it’s your sibling, and 100% chance of knowing what you’re getting anyway.
So since I realized that the whole rule book is nonexistent now, I proposed a few ideas to bring the fun back. Ideas such as bringing back the secret santa survey or requesting a variety of things to keep the mystery. But with the pull being teenagers and one of the teenagers being my mean sister of course my ideas weren’t even put into consideration and everyone got mad at me for no reason even though I was just proposing ideas. Thanksgiving is coming up which is when we usually pull and at this point I’m debating on telling my aunt not to put my name in the hat. Secret santa isn’t about knowing exactly what you get and who its from, it’s about mystery and the question how well you know the person you got.
So reddit, should I suck it up and do the secret santa, force them to fill out a form, or drop out?
NTA if you drop out. You shouldn’t be forced to do anything
The only rule we have for our family is be 18 years old. We have 18-95 year old playing in our family. If you don’t want to be a part of it you don’t have to
YWNBTA just drop out and it’ll collapse without you and you can all watch the adult white elephant. It’ll be ok! Everyone will survive.
We opted to move the “kids” to the group white elephant once they were in high school. We stopped the name draw because we never knew who all was going to make it to the Christmas party.
However, maybe play along this year and see how it goes (you might end up with yourself with that small a pool). Your ideas may sound better next year.
Is this the SS version of secret santa? Talk about sucking all the joy out of it.
NTA, this is meant to be fun.
One year my cousin got a whole bunch of different butt creams from secret Santa. Another year I pulled a cousin’s name that disliked secret Santa as much as I do. He got my name. We bought ourselves presents and put each other’s name on it. Just find ways to make it more fun for yourself. Oh, one year I wrapped the present for my sister-in-law in a plastic tube so that it looked like a dildo. Lol if no one else wants to make it fun, you make it fun..
NTA. This seems like the older cousins’ tradition, your generation should find your own thing to do.
NTA. Drop out. Forced participation in a Christmas activity would be against the spirit of gift giving.
NTA. Talk about turning fun into tedium. I’m with you. There’s no point in keeping this “tradition” alive.
NTA at all but it doesn’t really sound too much of a secret Santa. In my extended family, we do a name draw to see who you get presents from (very large so we can’t do everyone). They usually give a list of ideas too but it sounds like it’s basically exactly the same as your current, just not secret who you got. We live all over so we end up mailing our presents to each other usually.
I had no idea people did things this complex at Christmas. NTA.
NTA there is no more tradition. Your older cousins saw to that
NTA just tell them you’re out.
My entire family does white elephant so nobody knows what they’re getting out who the gift is from. It’s great fun, my mom started the tradition about 40 years ago.